At present, an expanded functionality is being considered for the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) that decides the technical specifications of public wireless communication networks (see, for example, 3GPP TR 33.812 V9.2.0 (2010-06)).
By using such expanded functionality (referred to as “Machine to Machine Equipment”), it will become possible to flexibly use information showing what services can be utilized. Such information showing what services can be utilized is known as a Machine Communication Identity Module (MCIM). As an example, it is possible to download an MCIM from a network or to temporarily invalidate and then revalidate an MCIM.
At present, information corresponding to an MCIM needs to be stored in a physical device called a Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) card. However, if an MCIM could be handled as software, the method of storage could be made more flexible.